It was a slow day, so I thought, hey, why not smack David Barton around? Serious version here, fun version here. Kudos to Warren Throckmorton, who caught Barton red-handed in yet another whopper of a bogus historical claim.

“The latest science demonstrates the ability of very premature babies to survive and even thrive, ever earlier in development,” said Dr. David Prentice, vice president and research director of the Charlotte Lozier Institute—the SBA List’s education and research arm.

(source: Where Does Your State Stand on Late-Term Abortions?)

All the video and audio media from last month’s TGC conference is now posted, up and live, accessible worldwide through this newfangled internet thing, including audio of my workshop: “Home Away from Home: Shining the Light of Joy and Hope in Our Troubled Culture.” Oh, I suppose you may also want to listen to talks from Tim Keller, Phil Ryken, folks like that, but come on – you know which talk you really want to hear.

A few of my favorite people in the workshops: Brian Fikkert, Mike Wittmer, Collin Hansen.

I have not yet had a chance to listen to the two panels on justice (theology and application) but look forward to doing so with eager anticipation.

That parents come under suspicion for teaching religious “myths” to their children isn’t a defect in liberalism. It’s the inherent imperialism of liberal reason coming to expression.

(source: The Imperialism of Liberal Reason)

Occasionally, a progressives makes the political mistake of being too open about where those assumptions lead, as was the case this week with the Australian philosopher Adam Swift, who noted, correctly, that being read to by one’s parents is correlated with a greater degree of subsequent economic success than is attending an elite school.

(source: Inching toward ‘Harrison Bergeron’, emphasis added)

Addendum:

The following passage also seems worth extracting here.

Our philosophy and our politics have not yet caught up with our other realities, and, if your tendencies are progressive, you do not want them to catch up, really, because their catching up would put you in a very difficult position: Either embrace the openly totalitarian proposition that there is no aspect of human life — including bedtime stories — that is beyond the reach of politics, or accept the sources of the inequality that you purport to be committed to eradicating.

Which is to say: Progressives can abandon the inequality crusade, they can abandon such vestigial liberalism as clings to them, or they can abandon reality.

(source: Inching toward ‘Harrison Bergeron’)